of the crowd, saw the widow Bender walking down the street. Noelle wore a black dress, slightly different than the one she’d worn the night before, but equally formfitting. She sashayed as she walked, barefoot, eating the largest ice-cream cone Maggie’d ever seen. She didn’t know there was anywhere in the village that sold ice creams that large. Impossible not to stare.
Impossible not to listen too, to the whispers around her.
Funeral’s tomorrow.
On the river. Humanist minister. What’s a humanist funeral?
Heard they took the kids away.
“I feel like we’re in ‘The Lottery,’ ” Maggie whispered.
“What?”
“You know, the Shirley Jackson story where they throw a rock at Mrs. Hutchison.” No sooner had the words escaped her that Maggie remembered her own rock.
There was too much darkness surrounding this man. She had to break through to the light somehow. She slipped past the crowd, following Noelle, thinking perhaps there was something she could do to connect with her, but as she turned onto her street, as the gap between them grew smaller and she yelled out her name, Noelle paused for just a moment, then turned her back on her and went into her house. Maggie followed to the door and rang the bell, but there was no answer, just as there had been no answer last night, when Noelle’s husband’s corpse was on Maggie’s lawn. She noticed, though, when she walked toward her own porch, that Noelle had flipped the remains of her ice-cream cone onto Maggie’s lawn. She picked it up, desperately wanting to do the right thing, but flipped it, instead, right back onto Noelle’s lawn.
“Take that,” she said, and walked back to Main Street to retrieve her car. Then she called Peter to arrange for a meeting, to figure out what was wrong and what she could do.
“We have to talk.”
“I’ll meet you at the park in an hour,” he said.
So she took a shower and washed all Iphigenia’s shellac out of her hair, put on a warm sweater and jeans and made some turkey sandwiches and coffee and then headed out for the park, hoping the news from Peter would not be too bad. That her sweet boy would stay safe.
Chapter 12
Of course Peter was late. Maggie could have taken a nap and read a book and he would still have arrived ten minutes after her, but she didn’t mind. Maggie loved sitting in the park at nighttime. The Tappan Zee Bridge hung like a necklace across the Hudson. Maggie loved to watch it at night; she’d been doing it since she was a child. Now she watched the new one slowly taking shape alongside of it.
She’d thrown rocks into the river as a little girl, skipping them across the flat water. She’d swum in the river, as had her daughter, climbing out onto the jetty and splashing around and, depending on the decade, clambering back in covered with sludge, or in recent years, clean water. (Thank you, Pete Seeger.)
Over this very spot the planes that wreaked destruction on 9/11 had come shrieking, and from this site she could see where the Twin Towers once stood. For months afterward the members of the village had gathered at this point, staring down at the scarred tip of Manhattan and mourning their own who had died in the attacks. Several trees had been planted here to commemorate it, and Maggie, inspired, had a tree planted in memory of her daughter. A spruce. She rarely went to Juliet’s grave, preferring instead to sit alongside this little tree. She felt closer to her daughter in this open, happy place, the lights twinkling, the leaves smelling of Christmas, and as she sat there she caught some movement out of the corner of her eye and saw it was the same Asian boy she’d seen skateboarding earlier that day. He was doing tricks with his skateboard right near the edge of the river, scraping the wheels against rocks she knew would stab him if he fell. Reckless. She wanted to warn him to stop. But she knew he wouldn’t; that type of person doesn’t stop no matter how you caution
Impossible not to listen too, to the whispers around her.
Funeral’s tomorrow.
On the river. Humanist minister. What’s a humanist funeral?
Heard they took the kids away.
“I feel like we’re in ‘The Lottery,’ ” Maggie whispered.
“What?”
“You know, the Shirley Jackson story where they throw a rock at Mrs. Hutchison.” No sooner had the words escaped her that Maggie remembered her own rock.
There was too much darkness surrounding this man. She had to break through to the light somehow. She slipped past the crowd, following Noelle, thinking perhaps there was something she could do to connect with her, but as she turned onto her street, as the gap between them grew smaller and she yelled out her name, Noelle paused for just a moment, then turned her back on her and went into her house. Maggie followed to the door and rang the bell, but there was no answer, just as there had been no answer last night, when Noelle’s husband’s corpse was on Maggie’s lawn. She noticed, though, when she walked toward her own porch, that Noelle had flipped the remains of her ice-cream cone onto Maggie’s lawn. She picked it up, desperately wanting to do the right thing, but flipped it, instead, right back onto Noelle’s lawn.
“Take that,” she said, and walked back to Main Street to retrieve her car. Then she called Peter to arrange for a meeting, to figure out what was wrong and what she could do.
“We have to talk.”
“I’ll meet you at the park in an hour,” he said.
So she took a shower and washed all Iphigenia’s shellac out of her hair, put on a warm sweater and jeans and made some turkey sandwiches and coffee and then headed out for the park, hoping the news from Peter would not be too bad. That her sweet boy would stay safe.
Chapter 12
Of course Peter was late. Maggie could have taken a nap and read a book and he would still have arrived ten minutes after her, but she didn’t mind. Maggie loved sitting in the park at nighttime. The Tappan Zee Bridge hung like a necklace across the Hudson. Maggie loved to watch it at night; she’d been doing it since she was a child. Now she watched the new one slowly taking shape alongside of it.
She’d thrown rocks into the river as a little girl, skipping them across the flat water. She’d swum in the river, as had her daughter, climbing out onto the jetty and splashing around and, depending on the decade, clambering back in covered with sludge, or in recent years, clean water. (Thank you, Pete Seeger.)
Over this very spot the planes that wreaked destruction on 9/11 had come shrieking, and from this site she could see where the Twin Towers once stood. For months afterward the members of the village had gathered at this point, staring down at the scarred tip of Manhattan and mourning their own who had died in the attacks. Several trees had been planted here to commemorate it, and Maggie, inspired, had a tree planted in memory of her daughter. A spruce. She rarely went to Juliet’s grave, preferring instead to sit alongside this little tree. She felt closer to her daughter in this open, happy place, the lights twinkling, the leaves smelling of Christmas, and as she sat there she caught some movement out of the corner of her eye and saw it was the same Asian boy she’d seen skateboarding earlier that day. He was doing tricks with his skateboard right near the edge of the river, scraping the wheels against rocks she knew would stab him if he fell. Reckless. She wanted to warn him to stop. But she knew he wouldn’t; that type of person doesn’t stop no matter how you caution
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